The Real World News - Breaking Texas Insurance news, US news and more

9/11: Chemical Engineer Mark Basile Found Nanothermite in WTC Dust

Yet another professional discusses his analysis of WTC dust, where he found evidence of nanothermite, a military grade explosive many scientists, physicists and engineers now believe may have been used to bring down the Twin Towers and WTC 7.

Every cop in town quits after Mexico attack

MEXICO CITY — The entire police force of a small northern Mexican town quit after gunmen attacked their recently inaugurated headquarters, according to local reports on Wednesday.

Los Ramones Mayor Santos Salinas said nobody was injured in Monday night's attack, during which gunmen fired more than 1,000 bullets at the building's facade, according to Noroeste newspaper's website. Six grenades, of which three detonated, were also flung at the building, the newspaper reported.

Arizona Law Requiring Voters Prove Citizenship Is Struck Down

A federal appeals court on Tuesday struck down a key part of Arizona's law requiring voters to prove they are citizens before registering to vote and to show identification before casting ballots.

The decision by a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that the law requiring voters to prove their citizenship while registering is inconsistent with the National Voter Registration Act. That federal law allows voters to fill out a mail-in voter registration card and swear they are citizens under penalty of perjury, but doesn't require them to show proof as Arizona's law does.

Midterm blowout: 50 or more Democratic seats set to fall in Tuesday's election

Republicans are headed for a blowout election win that seems certain to seize more than enough seats to knock out the Democrats and take control of the House.

The Hill 2010 Midterm Election poll, surveying nearly 17,000 likely voters in 42 toss-up districts over four weeks, points to a massive Republican wave that, barring an extraordinary turnaround, will deliver crushing nationwide defeats for President Obama’s party.

Up to $1 Billion in U.S. Aid Winds Up In Taliban Coffers

As much as $1 billion in U.S. aid has been diverted from programs meant to stabilize Afghanistan and has wound up in the hands of the Taliban and other insurgency groups, war analysts and government auditors say.

In fact, they say, graft has gotten so bad that the U.S. government estimates that only about 10 percent of the aid budget actually reaches the people in Afghanistan who need it.

Drunken' gene discovered by scientists

Scientists found that 10 per cent to 20 per cent of the population possess a particular version of the gene that causes them to get drunk easily.

The first few drinks during a night out will leave these individuals feeling more inebriated than their friends.

Cost of your health plan to rise 14%

Employees' share of premiums for a family plan is up an average 14%, to $3,997, vs. just a 3% rise in the total bill, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

And it's not just premiums that are spiraling higher. You're also likely to be hit with higher deductibles and out-of-pocket maximums as well as bigger bills for doctor's visits and drugs.

Will Bankers go to Jail for Foreclosure-gate?

One of the amazing developments of the unraveling of the financial crisis has been the fact that there have been so few people we can actually point to and say without a doubt that guy or gal is a crook. Yes, Bernie Madoff and his fellow ponziers, but they were only flushed out by the financial crisis. They didn't really cause it. The Bear Stearns hedgies beat their case. The mastermind of AIG's demise Joe Cassano looks to have made a clean getaway. Lehman's Dick Fuld is still in the clear. Goldman and just last week Countrywide's executives had to pay out large fines. But none of them are headed to jail. John Paulson and other hedge funds that help construct CDO debt bombs and bet against them, haven't even been forced to give some of their winnings back. I can't think of anyone of any real consequence who is facing hard time.

Al-Qaeda Mastermind Invited To Pentagon After 9/11(Video)

Al-Qaeda terror mastermind Anwar Al-Awlaki, the man who helped plot the aborted Christmas Day bombing, the Fort Hood shooting, the Times Square bombing attempt, and who also preached to the alleged September 11 hijackers, dined at the Pentagon just months after 9/11 documents obtained by Fox News show.

Time Magazine: Prospect Of Civil War In U.S. "Doesn't Seem That Far Fetched"

With protesters in France entering a seventh day of strikes and demonstrations against draconian austerity measures, many political observers in the U.S. are now wondering how long it will be before similar scenes unfold on American streets, with even Time Magazine now conceding that the prospect of a civil war in the States "doesn't seem that far fetched".

To be clear, Stephen Gandel's article entitled Will the Federal Reserve Cause a Civil War? largely dismisses the possibility that the Fed's upcoming November 3rd meeting, during which Ben Bernanke is expected to announce a fresh round of money printing, will prompt national uproar, but it doesn't exactly debunk the notion of longer term social dislocation as a backlash to the crumbling economy, as many are now forecasting.

October Surprise: Terror Hysteria Recycled In Election Ploy

The establishment media is giving full court press to announcements from US and European authorities that airport lobbies are being targeted for terror attacks in a recycled version of the laughable 2007 incident in which two mental deficients set fire to a jeep outside Glasgow airport, a non-event that authorities hyped beyond all recognition amidst a similar wave of hysteria to that which we're witnessing now.

The October surprise has arrived, and it's a contrived and cynical ploy to frighten Americans into putting their trust back in the government by waving the familiar boogeyman of the outside threat.

One in 28 US kids has a parent in prison

The US's exceptionally high rate of incarceration is causing economic damage not only to the people behind bars but to their children and taxpayers as a whole, a new study finds.

The study (PDF) from the Pew Research Center's Economic Mobility Project, released Tuesday, reports that the US prison population has more than quadrupled since 1980, from 500,000 to 2.3 million, making the US's incarceration rate the highest in the world, beating former champions like Russia and South Africa.

Western surge in obesity may have been caused by a virus

The obesity explosion that has swept the Western world over the past 30 years may have been caused by a virus, scientists have said.

Researchers have discovered new evidence for an illness they have called "infectobesity" - obesity that is transmitted from person to person, much like an infection. The agent thought to be responsible is a strain of adenovirus, versions of which cause the common cold. It has already been labelled the "fat bug".

Protests Against Austerity Sweep Europe

Strikes and demonstrations caused chaos across Europe yesterday as rioters clashed with police and cities were brought to a standstill.

Tens of thousands of people marched through Brussels in a protest against spending cuts in the European Union.

Is Government About to Make Mortgage Market Even Worse?

Government purchase applications have been driving the market for the past year, accounting for, at times, nearly half of all new loans. That may be about to change. New premium authority (translation: higher prices) goes into effect next week, on Oct. 4. New seller concessions policies are about to go into effect as well.

"These two policy changes will increase the opportunity for private capital to return to the market while improving the safety and soundness of FHA," FHA Commissioner David Stevens tells me.